Jeff Cutler™ – columns, essays and opinions

Setting: Bar room, stage, smoky, night, microphone on stage, couples huddled around the room

Characters: Jeff Cutler, unnamed people at the tables around the room, announcer/bartender

The bartender wanders across the stage and grabs the microphone. If you looked carefully at his hands, you can see the scars on his knuckles from numerous fights. This bartender used to be a bouncer who worked his way up in the organization. To some, bartending isn’t a lateral move.

BARTENDER: Here’s that writer guy. He twits or tweets, whatever. Give it up for Jeff Culter… Cutler.

Jeff bounces onto the stage wearing his Duluth Trading Company firehose pants and presentation jacket.

He smiles at the bartender and then waves to the crowd. Crowd is an overstatement – there are 9 people in the room, eight of them are awake.

JEFF: Thanks for that warm welcome! I just flew in from Boston and boy are my arms tired….

Then I wake up.

That little sequence is an approximation of the dream that keeps me – and maybe other dedicated content professionals – on task and focused when preparing to deliver information and training. I imagine it’s what Chris Brogan used to feel like before he made it (or is making it) big.

The reason I bring this up is because I’m now doing the mini-Chris Brogan tour around the country. As many of you know, the Society of Professional Journalists has hired me to teach newspeople all around the world how to use social media tools to listen to and engage people.

What’s that mean? Aside from harrowing flights on planes about the size of an Egg McMuffin, it means that I’m meeting some great folks, honing my presenting skills, and staying brutally on top of the latest social media news.

It also means that I get to taste some of the magic that Chris Brogan sees on a daily basis. Guess what, it’s not magic.

Like any other job, it looks attractive from the outside (except maybe for cat neuterer and human paintball target). The flying around the country, the exotic meals in random restaurants and the huge paychecks make it seem so. But here’s the breakdown…

Airport food, Wichita, KS (the people and beer were fantastic), wobbly planes, basic paychecks. It’s not the glamour you might have anticipated.

Yes, I’m not Brogan. But I imagine aside from a much larger check – rumors say it’s above $20,000 a day – it’s a similar grind.

So, before you start having dreams, waking up in a sweat, or bobbing around the midwest in little prop planes, take a look at your current workload and assignments. You might be better off with the day job and letting masochists like me and Chris go chat with organizations about how they can better use social media.

What job do you lust for? Share that in the comments.

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Woke up on this rainy morning and had an alert from Chris Brogan in my email box. It said he had a new blog post – big surprise – and I immediately read it because it featured poker player Andy Bloch.

I play a little poker and I’m pretty mediocre. I wouldn’t lose a bunch of money, but for a while I was slightly addicted. Not in a bad way…like my Internet addiction (doing email on a rainy Sunday when I could be having breakfast and putting photos of it up on NomX3 or WWJCE)…but I’d play frequently and lose about 52% of the time.

You might look at that figure and think I really stink, but if my math is correct, that means I’m losing about 2% of the time and doing OK the rest of the time. Not horrible at all.

I only got to be that good through the support of a friend of mine. He urged me to watch other players, read books on the game, and to analyze my own strategy.

Chris’ message today is one of support. Of how Andy helped out another player at the table. A big-time poker pro giving someone a little benefit just because he could.

It’s a lesson that if we have the tools at our disposal to help someone – regardless of whether we’ve gotten along in the past or whether our policies/beliefs align – what does it hurt to help out?

To me, this means putting in a good word for someone if you can. Introducing them to smarter people (that’s how we all improve). Going to their events and getting others to go. Making whatever community you’re a part of more cohesive instead of divisive.

Maybe I’m still groggy this morning and it’s making me sentimental.

Or maybe the rain is allowing me to see with clarity that if we don’t do unto others and share our support, friendships and relationships will wash away.

How are you helping support the people in your community?

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Chris Brogan’s latest book came out today. It’s called Trust Agents and he co-wrote the book with Julien Smith.

You know what I did when I found out that the book had hit newstands? Right, I bought it.

Really. I went to Amazon and dropped about $20 including shipping to buy his book.

Am I going to read it? Maybe. Am I going to learn anything from it. Only if I read it, and then maybe not. But I still felt some glee in buying a copy.

Why?

Because it’s important to support the people you care about. This includes family, friends, lovers and those in your community in whom you believe. Chris is one of these people.

He gives his time and opinion freely. He shares insight and perspective openly. And he’s a valuable connection and friend in the social media space.

Further, I’m a published author.

Maybe you didn’t realize it, but my first book came out in 2000. As an author I know firsthand what it’s like to give birth to a book. It’s amazing and chilling and fun and humbling. And what makes it even better is knowing that people will pay money to read your words.

That’s why I do a lot of the things I do in the social media fishbowl. Seriously.

I’m making a good portion of my income by training people how to tweet better and how to incorporate blogging and content creation into their enterprise. But if you ask me about blogging while we’re at an ice cream tweetup or during a taping of LUNCH, I’ll share my thoughts. That’s what the social part is all about.

I volunteered to show up on Permission TV on Thursday, do a guest spot on Word on the Tweet a week ago, and co-host an event with Ford Motor Company tomorrow in Cambridge.

Somewhere there are maxims and fortune cookies that tell of how great the return is when you give a little of yourself. It’s true. But I’m getting something back that’s greater than my time and attention. I’m getting to be around and learn from some really fun and smart people.

Folks like John Cass – who knows more about business operations and marketing than I could ever learn in two years of MBA classes.

Guys like Matt Searles – who keeps the oddest hours on the planet but has still self-published a bunch of music and shows up to support me at most of my random events.

Women like Laura Fitton – who also has a book out and gives all the credit to her co-authors for making it possible.

And the rest of the community who inspire me with their actions, their words and their presence. The stuff these people share isn’t something you can find in a book.

Or maybe it is. Why not take a quick jaunt over to Amazon and find out.

Kudos Mr. Brogan. Good work.

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Granted, many of the post titles here are a lot more descriptive than this one, but I’m sure you’ll get the imagery or the intent by the time you’re a little ways through the post. So, onward…

In a conversation I had with my GF the other day, she said, “You should definitely hitch your wagon to him.”

She was talking about a friend of mine. A guy who is fairly well-known in the social-media sphere and who has contacts elsewhere in business communities and the technology world.

Preliminarily I agreed. It’s never bad to know more people. It helps you maintain perspective – both personal and professional. It helps you reach new communities and audiences – fairly important when creating content for a variety of consumers. And having a variety of wagons around you – circa the old West – means that you’re ensconced in a protective and nurturing shield of like-minded and similarly driven entities.

But where does the fishbowl effect come in? When does each wagon start to look like the next one?

If you’re focused on the Boston social-media scene, you might ascribe any one of a dozen names to the person my girlfriend suggested. You’d likely be wrong. The person we were talking about was someone I got to know recently and someone who has far less influence than the recognized old-guard rockstars.

This guy has ideas about services and how to deliver them via the Web. He knows how to use and enjoy social media and is looking for partners in his quest.

It’s like watching the start of Lord of the Rings – or any film where a merry band of people gather together to take on the odds as a team.

Now let’s get to the butter.

For a while I’ve been an evangelist of social media tools. I’ve used most of them and have even taught individuals, businesses and educational institutions how to Tweet, Link and ‘Book. That’s not changing, but the thing that is – ever-so-slightly – is my focus on the future.

As Ashton Kutcher and Oprah delve into social media and drag it to the masses, there’s going to be a wave of demand for the skills I’ve built over the past five years.

Instead of being the scribe or content creator, I’ve shifted to the role of content coordinator. I’m now advising people about the content they should have and where they should have it. There’s a greater opportunity in that role – both for financial return and for sharing.

You see, if I just hitch my wagon to the superstars and feed Remora-like off their conquests nobody wins. If I ride alongside them and offer to pull people with my wagon, then the bread gets buttered on both sides for everyone.

The only reason I’m able to pull – and never lose sight of this – is that the rockstars have shared themselves and this is just my way to pay it forward…errr backward.

Look at your vehicle. Is it a wagon? If so, I urge you to offer someone a ride, too. You’ll both get where you’re going a little faster. Trust me.

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Right off the bat, I want to assure you that the word dimmer in the title has nothing negative associated with it. In the past seven months we’ve gone through the undulations of war, stock-markets, Steve Jobs’ health and other news that’s made us cringe, gasp, sneer and react in a dim way. So hang on for a moment, the use of the word dimmer refers analogously to how conversations are best started in the social-media sphere.

Wondering why I put a hyphen in social media? That could be an entire soap-box discussion for another day on the benefits of writing grammatically correct missives in a world that’s married to LOL and ROFLMA and thx and bai and other manglings. But not today. Right here and right now I’m going to talk about why a dimmer switch approach is better than just flicking the lights on when you’re going to share yourself with the Webiverse.

Picture a party scene. You’ve been invited because you live in the house next door and you’re not obviously a nudist, a murderer or a Hare Krishna. Digressing again, if you are one of these things I’m sure you have your reasons. Please don’t fill the comment box with the reasons why it’s better that we all go without clothing.

You step up to the front door of the house, ring the bell and wait. When the door opens, do you:

a – run screaming into the house, shouting your name and throwing pictures of yourself and your family to the guests?

b – see the door opening and dive headlong into the bushes at the side of the porch, quivering like one of those cute, but useless, punting dogs that waifish models carry in their purse?

c – thank the hostess, shake her hand, present her with a bottle of Cabernet and then stride into the room observing the scene – looking and listening for clues about the people and the environment you’ve just entered?

While I’m in favor of the the dive-in-the-bushes approach, the preferred way to gain acceptance, develop a valuable following, and create conversations that allow you to learn and grow is by twisting the dimmer switch up to a brightness you and your audience can tolerate.

Don’t blast the spotlight on the room and yourself by running around in an overbearing and annoying manner. And don’t leave the lightswitch off as you avoid the possibility of meeting some great people with fantastic perspectives and ideas. Just twist the dimmer and allow others – and yourself – to bask in the glow.

From what I’ve found, the casual and consistent approach can be explained by many metaphors, but the importance in social media is being yourself and contributing in a positive manner to the conversations going on around you.

You’ll soon find that the light on everyone else you admire and learn from is strong enough to illuminate the value everyone has to share…even you.

What’s your favorite metaphor for participating in the social-media fishbowl? I welcome you to shine a light on your point of view.

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This is the second version of the Podcamp Boston feature I prepared for a client earlier this summer.

Forging Connections in New Media – the value of Podcamp Boston
by Jeff Cutler
Correspondent

Steve Garfield couldn’t stop talking about meeting a woman from his neighborhood at last week’s Podcamp Boston 3. Both are photographers from Jamaica Plain.

Podcamp is an unconference built on the premise that hallway conversations are as important as session content. Garfield might have never have crossed paths with this woman at a traditional tech conference, but the unconference model encourages attendees to make connections and educate each other.

As with any conference, there were planned sessions. But that didn’t stifle collaboration in the hallways or regular posts on Twitter (a group text-message service) during the show.

Some messages alerted podcampers to room changes or speaker adjustments. Some broadcast what was going on in the room where they sat. During the keynote, most tweets (the 140-character messages carried on Twitter) were quotes of the speakers or requests for the location of other attendees.

According to Garfield, the relationships that come from Podcamp Boston are valuable.

“What I get out of these Podcamps is meeting new people and making new relationships with new people,” said Garfield. “And also making existing relationships I have with people stronger.”

For all its free-form stylings, the podcamp product does have six rules. These are:
1. All attendees must be treated equally. Everyone is a rockstar.
2. All content created must be released under a Creative Commons license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/
3. All attendees must be allowed to participate. (subject to limitations of physical space, of course)
4. All sessions must obey the Law of 2 Feet – if you’re not getting what you want out of the session, you can and should walk out and do something else. It’s not like you have to get your money’s worth!
5. The event must be new-media focused – blogging, podcasting, video on the net.
6. The financials of a PodCamp must be fully disclosed in an open ledger, except for any donor/sponsor who wishes to remain anonymous.

And an unconference can have its bumps. A room change at the last minute left attendees scrambling to find the right room. And some equipment challenges stalled the beginning of a session. But the podcamp audience is versed in using technology to solve problems.

Half an hour into this year’s event, Jim Storer of Burlington-based Mzinga used Twitter to ask if anyone could find portable speakers for a session that was happening in room 214.

Room and speaker changes were also broadcast to all attendees using the Twitter tag #pcb3.

That on-the-fly use of technology underscores what co-founders Christopher Penn and Chris Brogan hoped would happen when they started Podcamp Boston in September 2006. They wanted an event where the people were the essence of the conference. Where the experience and knowledge a person had would enrich the lives of other attendees.

Penn, Chief Technology Officer at the Student Loan Network, explained the unconference model as a “conference put on by its participants.”

Since Podcamp Boston 1, there have been 41 podcamps worldwide. So why do the same people keep attending?

The unconference bug bit Phil Campbell after he attended a couple podcamps. This geek from the United Kingdom decided Brogan and Penn had come up with a formula that worked.

In less than a year, he had nearly £10,000 in funding and started Podcamp UK.

“The thing that happens at podcamps,” said Campbell. “Is that the people who are looking for something tend to organically gravitate toward the people who can make those things happen.”

Boston resident Adam Weiss has helped organize each Boston podcamp and feels that the way people share information continues to change.

Weiss used to create audio podcasts for the Museum of Science. It was a low-cost way to share science knowledge with a broad audience. It gave science fans a resource they could download at their leisure. It gave the Museum another way to add value to traditional exhibits.

Weiss is now a podcast consultant and explained that podcasting is becoming commonplace, as is the sharing of information at unconference models like Podcamp.

“It’s starting to become a lot more mainstream,” he said. “So you get a mixture of the people who really know what they’re doing and know what they’re talking about – the geeks again – but also you get a lot of people who want to learn about this. One of the exciting things about an unconference is that it’s either cheap or free, and everybody arrives as equals. So you can go, even if you don’t know anything, and just talk to these people who are experts in the field.”

Brogan, VP of Strategy & Technology at CrossTech Media, said, “There’s a lot of technologists and a lot of media makers and a lot of forward-thinking people on the Boston scene.”

Smart people are necessary ingredients to an unconference, according to Penn. He said the first unconferences were formed with a simple thought.

“Let’s put a couple hundred of the smartest people we know in a bunch of rooms together for a couple days and see what happens,” said Penn. “That’s really the essence of this unconference idea. It’s the participants and what they bring with them makes it work.”

Podcamp Boston 3 was held July 19-20 at Harvard Medical School’s Joseph Martin Conference Center.

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Jeff Cutler is also a podcaster, and is halfway through a one-year writing sabbatical. His progress reports are available at www.jeffcutler.com. Jeff can be reached via email at jeff@jeffcutler.com.

If you have comments or questions about the event, please leave them here in the comments section. If you’d like to have me cover an event for your publication, send me an email.

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This is the first version of the Podcamp Boston feature I prepared for a client earlier this summer. Sometime over the weekend I’ll share the second version of this article.

Podcamp Boston 3 – A Tech-Centric Event About Making Connections
by Jeff Cutler
Correspondent

Podcamp Boston is a blank canvas where tech professionals, bloggers, podcasters and anyone interested in new media can paint a masterpiece.

That’s how Podcamp co-founder Christopher Penn described the opportunities offered at this annual unconference, the third edition of which took place in Boston July 19-20 at Harvard Medical School’s Joseph Martin Conference Center.

Penn, Chief Technology Officer at the Student Loan Network, explained the unconference(cq) model as a “conference put on by its participants.” Podcamp is an event where people can meet, collaborate and learn about media and the technologies people are using to communicate.

Of the 466 paid registrants for this year’s event, many have their own blogs or podcasts (see sidebar).

In geek-speak, this material…be it videos on YouTube, blog posts online, or even downloadable audio…is all classified as content. The people at Podcamp are a self-described collection of content creators and media makers.

But Podcamp is more than a gathering of geeks, and an attendee need not have her own podcast or video blog to participate. Podcamp is part of a movement focused on the way people connect with others, how they entertain themselves and how they share information.

There have now been 41 editions of this unconference worldwide beginning with Podcamp Boston in September 2006.

Chris Brogan is the other Podcamp co-founder and he believes that an unconference is ideal for people to learn about technologies that allow them to connect with others. He contends that Podcamp offers something for everyone, especially people new to using technology.”

“Who we’re trying to reach are the people who we think need to know more about this media,” he said. “So we might reach into businesses, we might reach into educators, we might reach into healthcare, and places where you would not expect your attendee base to come from for an event about media.”

In the hallways at Podcamp, you can’t walk 30 feet without encountering technology. iPhones are commonplace and session updates are handled by sending out alerts via a group text-message service called Twitter.

Many have attended a Podcamp previously, but they come to Boston out of their desire to stay connected with the podcasting world.

Adam Weiss began listening to podcasts in 2003 and helped organize the first Boston Podcamp. This Boston resident attended Podcamp Boston 3 to stay on top of frequently changing methods and technologies in podcasting. For Weiss, this is more than a hobby, it’s his job.

Weiss used to create audio podcasts for the Museum of Science. It was a low-cost way to share science knowledge with a broad audience. It gave science fans a resource they could download and enjoy at their leisure. And it gave the Museum another way to connect with the community and add value to traditional exhibits.

Weiss now makes his living as a podcast consultant and his current projects include audio walking tours of different cities – http://www.audisseyguides.com – and a regular interview-based podcast called Boston Behind the Scenes, http://bostonbehindthescenes.com. This show has featured everyone from Duck Tour drivers to a homeless man Weiss saw regularly during his morning commute.

While these behind-the-scene interviews might attract a small audience, Weiss said that NPR and major broadcasting networks make their programs available in podcast form and their audiences measure in the thousands.

Weiss explained that podcasting is becoming more common, as is the sharing of information at an unconference model like Podcamp.

“It’s starting to become a lot more mainstream,” he said. “So you get a mixture of the people who really know what they’re doing and know what they’re talking about – the geeks again – but also you get a lot of people who want to learn about this. One of the exciting things about an unconference is that it’s either cheap or free, and everybody arrives as equals. So you can go, even if you don’t know anything, and just talk to these people who are experts in the field.”

One such expert is Steve Garfield, a video specialist who lives in Jamaica Plain. Apart from Garfield’s willingness to share video and photoblogging techniques, is his genuine interest in attendees.

“What I get out of these Podcamps is meeting new people and making new relationships with new people,” said Garfield. “And also making existing relationships I have with people stronger.”

Those types of connections are common at an event that has been built on the collaborative energy present in the Boston tech community. According to Brogan, “Boston has a really great tech scene.”

He mentioned the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard, MIT’s media labs and a number of meet-ups (informal gatherings of like-minded people) as examples of how Boston nurtures advances in the adoption of technology.

“There’s a lot of technologists and a lot of media makers and a lot of forward-thinking people on the Boston scene,” said Brogan. “Adding in the newer wave of social media users like PR and marketing types, there’s quite a groundswell of people really passionate and interested in some aspect of making media, distributing media and using content to build relationships.”

That passion has spawned similar events all over the world. After attending an earlier Podcamp Boston, Phil Campbell, founder of http://www.me.dm, decided to establish an unconference for users on the other side of the Atlantic. He raised nearly £10,000 and Podcamp UK took place last September.

“The thing that happens at Podcamps,” said Campbell. “Is that the people who are looking for something tend to organically gravitate toward the people who can make those things happen.

Penn explained that through the use of Google, iChat, Twitter, email and other technologies, people are more knowledgeable and connected than they ever were before.

And it’s through the use of these utilities and the techniques learned at Podcamp, that people are communicating with others and painting their own technology masterpieces every day.

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Jeff Cutler is also a podcaster and is halfway through a one-year writing sabbatical. His progress reports are available at www.jeffcutler.com. Jeff can be reached via email at jeff@jeffcutler.com.

If you have comments or questions about the event, please leave them here in the comments section. If you’d like to have me cover an event for your publication, send me an email.

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Don’t get me started on my rant about how any idiot with a cellphone camera or a pencil thinks they can be a journalist. That’s precisely why the word has quotes around it in the title.

But if you were to get me started on this topic, I would point you to an outstanding overview of the influence that social media is now playing in our society.

The only trouble with the piece and Chris Brogan’s perspective is that he’s coming from it as a proponent of the good that social media can do for companies, brands and messages.

As a professional journalist, I am loathe to share my space with people who think a blog is the same as a newspaper or media outlet. The lines are blurring, but that only means that consumers (anyone who reads news or wants to devour information about the world around them) should be ever more vigilant about where they get their information.

We’ve all seen and received the emails about Bill Gates giving people money for sending emails. We’ve all gotten the notes from people on missing children who don’t exist. We’ve all seen Robin Williams’ supposed diatribe on Iraq and oil.

For the most part, those items are perpetuated because the majority of people don’t have the training to check facts and verify information. My fear—substantiated by the tsunami of misinformation that’s present on the Web—is that media outlets will start to look only at the beans and decide that Joe and Josephine Six-Pack are as good at typing out the news or sharing opinions as those of us with years of training.

Then we all lose because the citizen ‘journalist’ who replaces a trained reporter is dragging down the standard by which we all take for granted. And when that standard vanishes, then our best source of news is going to be what we can see and hear for ourselves.

That might be easier with cameras and audio coming in from everywhere, but it’s also akin to the Old West when prospectors were oblivious to events that happened outside of there immediate vicinity.

Are we headed there? I don’t know. People are still paying me to write while bloggers are still scraping adsense and other avenues to make a dime.

I just think that the thought leaders (is that still being used as a term?) should take a breath before trumpeting the benefits of the untrained troops—I should call them troupes because it’s mostly performance art—and give some credit to the established and trained journalists.

Seriously. This needs to happen before everything we learn is categorized as ‘news’.

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